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vii Foreword It is hard to find the words to express my delight that this important anthology is finally going to press. Some years back, Christopher Hanscom, then a PhD student in Korean literature at the University of California, Los Angeles, approached me with an idea about a project that would have our graduate students translate a number of essays by major Korean thinkers of the colonial period. Chris and I spent some time going through various colonial-era publications and subsequent compilations of essays, most notably the 1972 edition of the Anthology of Renowned Essays of Modern Korea (Han’guk hyŏndae myŏng nonsŏl chip) published by Sindonga, identifying a number of pieces that seemed worthy of introduction to an English-speaking audience. Chris, in collaboration with a number of other graduate students , then applied to UCLA’s Center for Korean Studies for funding for a translation workshop, an application that was approved enthusiastically by the center’s faculty advisory committee. The workshop involved multiple sessions. At the first session we discussed the purposes of the project and the potential audience for an anthology , made preliminary choices of texts and translators, and decided to invite the participation of a small number of graduate students at other universities who had expertise on some important texts. At subsequent sessions, translators shared early drafts while working on such matters as the format of the book, the integration of translations and introductions, a style sheet, and romanization. Walter Lew played a particularly important role in guiding the group on these issues, and Youngju Ryu made substantial contributions to the overall conceptualization of the project. Seeking to maintain the collaborative nature of the undertaking and to ensure high-quality translations and introductions, we established procedures by which the translators reviewed and commented on each other’s work. The project languished for a few years, partly for lack of funding and partly because most of the translators were preoccupied with finishing their PhD dissertations. Nevertheless, a few years ago we received authorization from the Academy of Korean Studies to include the anthology in the Historical Materials series of the Korean Classics Library translation program. This provided the funding to complete the project. We decided to have Chris Hanscom, Walter Lew, and Youngju Ryu serve as volume viii Foreword editors; they have labored long and hard to transform this diverse collection of translations and introductions into a coherent whole. Although all the translations and introductions had been reviewed by other members of the group, we turned to outside talent for reviews of some of the translations while I myself reviewed and edited several of the more difficult translations and introductions. In selecting texts for this project, we followed a small number of principles: 1) the degree to which texts could be considered representative of the debates among Korean intellectuals and between Korean and Japanese intellectuals of the colonial period; 2) the extent to which some texts could shed light on what have been relatively unexplored aspects of colonial intellectual life; and 3) the relevance of texts to current debates about the nature of the colonial experience and its effects on post-liberation Korean society and culture. We had in mind a volume that could be used in undergraduate and graduate courses on Korea as well as in more general courses on East Asia and that would also be attractive and useful for a general educated audience with interests in modern Korea and East Asia. Reviews by our three outside referees suggest that we may have accomplished our goals. I can only hope that this anthology will contribute to better appreciation of the modern Korean experience as well as to greater general understanding of the travails of the intellectuals of colonized peoples. John Duncan, Director Center for Korean Studies University of California, Los Angeles ...

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